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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28898367">the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro29/pseuds/Ro29'>Ro29</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the scars that war and childhood leave [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Has Issues, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, But much less so than normal!, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Im sorry Shmi, In which a mirror saves the universe, Light Angst, Movie: Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Pre-Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Shmi Skywalker Deserves Better, They're people!!!, Tusken Raiders (Star Wars), Unreliable Narrator Anakin Skywalker, and Anakin gets a rude awakening, and sentient!!!!, ig</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:00:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,495</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28898367</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro29/pseuds/Ro29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The galaxy hums and he is useless and he rages and rages and <em>takes</em> and his mother dies and the suns are hot upon his back and the sand is coarse and wethers away his heart until there is nothing left but him and the destruction he has wrought.</p><p>He wakes and he can not breathe, the air hums with warning and there is a burning under his skin.</p><p> </p><p>[Prequel to 'childhood (strong and full of foreboding)']</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anakin Skywalker &amp; Shmi Skywalker, Padmé Amidala &amp; Anakin Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the scars that war and childhood leave [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903012</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>anyways, ya know how i havent updated childhood in forever?? well this isn't that but like, same verse!! look at that!! anyways yeah, have some anakin in crisis and making better decisions than in canon!! </p><p>title is a quote attributed to Henry David Thoreau</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In his dreams, there is sand and pain and anger.</p><p> </p><p>The galaxy hums and he is useless and he rages and rages and <em>takes</em> and his mother dies and the suns are hot upon his back and the sand is coarse and wethers away his heart until there is nothing left but him and the destruction he has wrought.</p><p> </p><p>He wakes and he can not breathe, the air hums with warning and there is a burning under his skin.</p><p> </p><p>He is terrified though he is not yet desperate, close to it, but not yet. He holds onto the hope that it is just a nightmare, tries to dismiss the feeling of intent singing in the air, beating in his chest.</p><p> </p><p>It doesn’t work, pings in the back of his head, builds and builds. Until paranoia and worry threaten to overwhelm him. He feels as if he is being sucked into the sand dunes, slipping under the sand and choking under the weight of it all without air.</p><p> </p><p>He hates and it's a dangerous thing. He doesn't want to hate, he doesn't want this to happen but he can't ignore it.</p><p> </p><p>The air is singing and screaming and he is being crushed.</p><p> </p><p>He wants to scream, wants to sob and cry for his mother like he hasn't done since he was nine and terrified.</p><p> </p><p>He wants to reach into the world and rip it apart and rearrange it to fix it all, keep her safe, keep everyone he loves safe.</p><p> </p><p>He catches a look of his face in the mirror and can’t recognize himself, recognizes the shape of his anger and the dragon roaring in his chest but can’t tell when he reminded himself more of the cruel master’s than his mother.</p><p> </p><p>He scares himself.</p><p> </p><p>He has always felt a lot and felt it fiercely, burned within his bones. But this is something new, something all consuming and overpowering and he doesn’t like it, doesn’t think he likes how he feels or how he acts when he’s so consumed by it.</p><p> </p><p>Thinks he understands, now, why everyone always told him to be more mindful of his emotions, he hadn’t been as mindful as he probably could’ve been, vented to the Chancellor and stewed in his own negative feelings as an indulgence far too many times, put off meditating for far too long.</p><p> </p><p>Let himself enter a loop that made him vulnerable to this sickening anger that tore through his chest and made him feel like he was burning.</p><p> </p><p>He is imploding, burning everything down with him and he almost missed it.</p><p> </p><p>He stands, he meditates, folds into himself and rips himself apart in search of something, anything, to explain this. Finds nothing but more pain. He breathes, tries to clear his mind and fails.</p><p> </p><p>He is always failing.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Maybe, in some other place and time and universe, with everything mostly the same but just slightly to the left, there would be no mirror on the wall by the bed.</p><p> </p><p>And maybe in this universe the first thing Anakin Skywalker saw upon walking was not himself and his own vicious snarl of bloodied teeth and anger and the faint cries of children and his mother’s screams echoing in his head.</p><p> </p><p>We might hope that in that turn of events, Anakin Skywalker still found the part of himself that was his mother’s son, that still held kindness in his heart and knew the galaxy needed more of it, took that bright anger and near blind rage and turned it into something else.</p><p> </p><p>We might hope that, in that universe with no mirror hung like a poor allusion to inner reflection, Anakin Skywalker was still kind, was still doing his best to be all he could be. Light and good and learning still, but <em>trying.</em> We would hope that he would know that the death of innocents solves nothing and pains many.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <strike>(“I killed them all. Not just the men, but the women and children too.”)</strike>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Hope is a fragile thing.</p><p> </p><p>And we all know how that story goes.</p><p> </p><p>It is good then, that no one ever thought to move that mirror from the wall.</p><p> </p><p>Such a small thing, to create such a big change.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Padmé is a blessing.</p><p> </p><p>She is not quite a saviour, but she is the breath of water after a long day, the joy in a slave’s wedding, the soft warmth of family after the terror of an auction. She is a gift and with every breath she breathes she is giving gifts like they are grains of sand. Plentiful and never-ending.</p><p> </p><p>She tells him they will go to Tatooine and she is radiant in her kindness.</p><p> </p><p>His new step-family are strange, and leave a hint of a bitter taste in his mouth, for all that he is sure he might grow to love them if he gives them a chance and is given one in turn.</p><p> </p><p>But there isn’t much time for that, not when his mother is in danger.</p><p> </p><p>Anakin Skywalker walks into the desert alone.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Maybe, in a different universe, tilted even more askew than the measly one here, Anakin Skywalker found a way to speak to Obi-Wan Kenobi without defensiveness creeping up on him and making it so easy to misunderstand everything. Maybe he figured out how to say what he meant and be heard and to hear what was said and meant in turn.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe he did it years before, when he was still tiny enough to tuck up against his Master’s side, maybe it was broken free by the nightmares and a recent fragile thing that Obi-Wan helped soothe and reassure and a different plan was hatched.</p><p> </p><p>In these universes, maybe Shmi Skywalker would live.</p><p> </p><p>But this story is well known, old and tired and sad.</p><p> </p><p>Anakin Skywalker goes into the desert alone and returns with his mother’s dead body.</p><p> </p><p>And the universe <em>shifts</em>.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>He is burning. The rage and fury and desperation are all a flame against his skin with no balm.</p><p> </p><p>He has always known that the Tuskens were monsters, always known they were dangerous, but there is a difference, in the knowing and the seeing.</p><p> </p><p>He holds his mother in his arms and begs the universe to save her, begs and pleads and hopes he made it on time.</p><p> </p><p>He cradles his mother in his arms and he has never been more than what he is, a powerless child with anger in his bones and a heart in chains.</p><p> </p><p>He holds her as she tells him she loves him and then she is gone and he is a sandstorm with no end.</p><p> </p><p>His mind goes blank and two of the Tuskens fall. He wants to rip through them, hurt them as much as they hurt his mother, ruin them and leave them for dead, take the sandstorm in his chest and lay ruin to them. He wants them all dead, he wants them to suffer, he wants—</p><p> </p><p>He wants his mother.</p><p> </p><p>The sandstorm quiets and he sheathes his lightsaber with shaking hands.</p><p> </p><p>He picks his mother up in his arms to the sound of Tusken children playing and he burns with it all.</p><p> </p><p>He carries his mother’s body home through the desert, and doesn’t think of just how close he was to taking everything he has ever learned about the preciousness of life away, doesn’t think of two dead instead of the whole camp, doesn’t think of a sandstorm willing to swallow innocents and wrongdoers alike.</p><p> </p><p>Were the Tuskens monsters for killing his mother, or was he one for wanting to raze them to the ground.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t want to think about that, or what the answer might be.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>(Children, there were children, he almost killed children.)</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He walks, and he doesn’t stop until he reaches his step-family’s home, collapses as shaky legs crumble under him and refuse to support him, muscles burning and mind numb.</p><p> </p><p>He is floating distantly, registers his mother’s burial only faintly, registers the shaking of his hands and the tears in his eyes even further away.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t cry, doesn’t waste his water. Sits and shakes and thinks of monsters and animals and sentient beings and how easy it would be to tip himself over the edge without ever knowing.</p><p> </p><p>The Tuskens are sentient, he knows that, has known it since he was small.</p><p> </p><p>What, he wonders, would he have tried to say they were if he’d lost himself in the sandstorm, in the rage?</p><p> </p><p>He thinks of rage and death and how easy it is to kill when the sandstorm whirls around you, how easy it could have been to tip over the edge and into the dark.</p><p> </p><p>His throat closes and his hands shake and he doesn’t want to think about it.</p><p> </p><p>His heart is heavy in his chest, and the sound of children playing as a lightsaber hums haunts him.</p><p> </p><p>The sun’s rise.</p><p> </p><p>He closes his eyes and tries to find something in him that he can recognize.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you want to find me other places I have a <a href="https://rose-blooms-red.tumblr.com">writing tumblr</a> and a <a href="https://themessofthecentury.tumblr.com">fandom tumblr</a> </p><p>Please come yell at me about Star Wars and DC!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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